My boyfriend and I are in our 30's. He's a Kosovan Albanian, who lived in Kosovo until he was about 30 or so. I'm a German. Him and his family have been living away from Kosovo for about 10 years. He lives with his family still. We live in the same city. He has a very basic command of German, and I know a few bits of Albanian.
We've been together about a year. I know his brothers and friends, but haven't met his parents. He talks of us having a child together in the next few years. He says he loves me. His friends say he's in love with me (sometimes I've sat with him and them in an Albanian cafe). We are in touch most days via a messaging application.
A number of things concern me, and I'd like to know if any of these can be explained by cultural differences:
- I see him rarely - it's 2 weeks since I have seen him, which isn't typical, but it has often been a week
- whenever I have asked over the messaging application if he'd like to eat with me later/tomorrow, he has always declined
- he goes to an Albanian cafe with his friend 4 or 5 evenings a week, and will sit with them drinking, eating and chatting for 5 or 6 hours, and go to work on very little sleep
- he never brings me gifts
- he never organises dates for us
Why doesn't he ever want to eat with me?
Why doesn't he spend time with me?
I never get to the bottom of either of those questions. In response to the eating question, he always answers something akin to "of course we can", but we never do. In response to the time question, he always answers something akin to "I have no time because I am always working", or "I will come over later tonight/tomorrow".